National Awards finalists showcase excellence in age services

Leading Age Services Australia (LASA) congratulates all the finalists in the inaugural LASA Excellence in Age Services Awards that will be presented at its National Congress in Adelaide on Tuesday 30 October.

The Awards promote and recognise excellence across the diverse and dynamic fields of endeavour in the age services industry and celebrate the passion and achievements of organisations, teams and individuals in the service of older Australians.

Awards have been judged at a state level across the three categories – Outstanding Organisation, Outstanding Team and Outstanding Individual. Each of the national finalists have been award winners in their respective states. These state winners will now vie for the national awards to be announced at the National Congress Gala Dinner.

LASA Chief Executive Officer Sean Rooney praised the high quality of entries from across the country saying the finalists represented examples of the best care and services being delivered to older Australians by LASA Members.

“This is evidence of the great work being done by our Members right around the country,” he said.

“They exemplify the high performing and high quality care and services our industry strives to deliver for older Australians.

“It is particularly important that in these times of heightened attention and reform in our industry that we recognise the many positive examples of high quality care delivered by the passionate, age services professionals across the country.

“I look forward to announcing the winners at our National Congress and meeting the individuals and teams who are doing so much to help older Australians age well.”

Outstanding Individual award finalists

This award recognises an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the age services sector, has used innovation and initiative to improve the lives of older people and has delivered high quality care to the aged.

Claire’s role is to collaborate with local visiting GPs in providing care, services and treatment plans to residents. The primary focus of the role is to monitor and identify exacerbation of chronic health conditions.

Claire’s role is integral as it allows the organisation to assist residents who require ongoing or one-off care, giving them peace of mind that they are receiving top-tier care throughout their time at the Village.

Nicole Devlin, Chief Customer Officer, Ballycara – Queensland

Nicole possesses extensive experience and qualifications in primary health and aged care management, education, leadership, innovation and research spanning a career of over 25 years.

Nicole leads the operational management and customer service of BallyCara’s service and accommodation offerings of Wellness, HomeCare, Retirement Living and Residential Care. She is a member of the executive team and accordingly has shared responsibility for quality, strategy and business growth.

Kyle is employed by Australian Unity as the Moments That Matter (MTM) Clinic Coordinator, based at Rathdowne Place.

The Clinic focuses on providing emotional, social, cognitive and behavioural support from a client-centred, psychosocial perspective – targeting “moments that matter” in a resident’s aged-care journey.

The success of the MTM Clinic and the improved health and lifestyle outcomes for residents taking part in the innovative program have also been a result of the strong relationships Kyle has established with stakeholders.

Dannielle Phelan, Learning and Development (L&D) Manager, The Bethanie Group, Western Australia

Dannielle is the Learning and Development Manager for the Bethanie Group. Since joining the organisation in 2016 she has initiated and delivered a large-scale learning transformation program that has resulted in significant benefits and represented an outstanding contribution to the Aged Care sector.

Over the last year, she has radically transformed the learning environment, systems and processes at Bethanie. This new direction has improved learning outcomes, capability and knowledge retention, whilst at the same time significantly reducing the amount of time direct care staff spend attending face-to-face training courses. This has increased the amount of time staff spend with customers and improved outcomes for older people across WA.

Outstanding Team Award finalists

Recognising a team, working within the age services sector that has created an environment that encourages workplace diversity, positive workplace culture and increased staff wellbeing through development of a service or process or has used innovation and initiative to improve the lives of older people and improve the age services experience.

Goodwin Health and Wellness Centre Team – New South Wales & ACT

The team at Goodwin Health and Wellness Centre, incorporating Goodwin Health Club, provide seniors with access to a hub of specialists in one location, which ensures that clients’ various health services support each other in the context of the person’s lifestyle, mental and physical health, and care plans.

Healthy Connections Exercise Clinic – Queensland

The Healthy Connections exercise clinic team work in a unique setting, providing community access to specialised clinical exercise programs and health management services for older people.

The team of accredited exercise physiologists all have specialist areas of expertise. Their primary focus is prevention, rehabilitation and management of a wide range of health conditions.

Reynella Lodge Team – South Australia & Northern Territory

Life Care believe that ageing is a natural part of life that should be respected and wanted to create a better ageing experience by providing opportunities for their residential customers to embrace life to live every day.

For this reason, Life Care developed a service model that places the customer at the centre of all decision making and a master plan to develop and deliver home-like environments based on international best practice and integrated with the local communities.

Life Care’s service model focuses on the individual customer, their lifestyle and normal rhythm of life rather than the traditional task focused clinical/medical model.

The overall objective of the Health and Wellbeing Coaching program is to enhance the caring relationship through a focus on the health and wellbeing of the carer, which may include nutrition, physical activity, stress/mood, fatigue/sleep and chronic disease management or prevention.

Through individual coaching sessions, undertaken either face to face or by phone, the Health and Wellbeing coaches work to foster carer health literacy, goal setting, resilience, self-management, decision making and sustained behaviour change.

The program evaluates its impact by collecting qualitative and quantitative health data at milestones in the coaching journey which are measurable and comparable to initial data, thus, generating a health profile for each participating carer.

Care Team at Riversea Mosman Park –Western Australia

The care team at Riversea Mosman Park, a Bethanie Aged Care Facility, has undergone an incredible journey over the last six years, changing rapidly from what was traditionally a low care residential aged care facility, to a fully dementia specific specialised service provider.

The dedicated team of experienced, enthusiastic and motivated health professionals and carers focus primarily on ensuring person-centred care is delivered on a daily basis.

The care team at Riversea Mosman Park shows strength in being truly person-centred and going above and beyond standard service provision, to ensure evidence based best practice dementia care is provided.

Outstanding Organisational Award Finalists

Recognising an age services provider who has made an outstanding contribution to care and services development or provision of high level support to the aged by demonstrating leadership, innovation and excellence.

The Whiddon Group –New South Wales & ACT

The Whiddon Group (Whiddon) is a not-for-profit organisation that has been providing care and support services to older people for over 70 years.

With over 2000 residents and clients, and 2000 staff, Whiddon operates in 20 locations across NSW and QLD. They are considered a medium to large provider in aged care in Australia. In some areas, such as in the far west of NSW, they are not only the only provider in town, but the only provider of aged care services for hundreds of kilometres.

Sundale Ltd –Queensland

Established in 1963, Sundale grew out of a single-minded focus on caring for and accommodating the needs of Queensland elders.

Their dedicated teams are supporting and caring for their customers across a broad range of services – over 500 team members, helped by around 300 volunteers, support in excess of 2,200 customers.

Ridleyton Greek Home for the Aged – South Australia & Northern Territory

This residential aged care facility provides accommodation for 120 care recipients and caters for two special needs groups, namely people who identify with the Greek culture, as well as those living with dementia.

The Greek Orthodox community also provide community services and independent living under the affordable housing scheme for 50 people over 65.

The organisation is continuously working towards being a disability confident organisation that focuses on what people with a disability can do rather than what they can’t, just as we should for all people.

Cooinda –Victoria & Tasmania

Cooinda is a not for profit aged care facility located in the regional north east Victorian town of Benalla.

Established in 1969 by community members, today Cooinda is Benalla’s largest aged care facility, which has been providing excellence in individualised person-centred care for older people and their families for 48 years.

Cooinda’s individualised continuum of care includes:

Independent Living

Residential Care including high care and dementia care,

Home care services

Health and Wellbeing Activities

A Community Support Person and

Support and counselling for residents and families.

The Benalla Rural City, a farming community with less than 10,000 people, is the lowest socio-economic district in the Hume Region. Benalla also has a higher than average ageing population, which continues to drive strong demand for high care and dementia aged care services in the region.

Nagambie HealthCare –Victoria & Tasmania

Nagambie HealthCare (NHC) is an integrated rural health service with responsibility for delivering services across the spectrum of acute care, sub-acute care, aged care and community services.

NHC delivers services to an immediate population of 2,000 and a broader catchment area of 3,302 square kilometres which contains a predominantly aging population of over 10,000 people. NHC is a not for profit community-owned organisation that recently faced

closure, acquisition or organisational reformation. The NHC Board made the brave decision to remain a community-owned and operated health service and reformed the organisation with emphasis on sustainable service provision and diversification relevant to community need.

Technology Ageing and Disability Western Australia –Western Australia

Technology Assisting Disability Western Australia (TADWA) provides a unique range of technologies supporting people with disability, older people and carers to live independent lives and do what’s important to them.

Originally a volunteer organisation of Telecom employees modifying telephones for use by people with disability, over the past 34 years TADWA has progressively expanded its operations into a highly capable and diverse staff of 60 servicing thousands of clients each year from bases in Bassendean and Bunbury.